To Cross the Burning Bridge
by Rallalon
Summary: [WARNING: Spoilers for movie ahead] The Gate is closed, the battle is over and the time has come to deal with the aftermath. And as Roy Mustang is soon to discover, the exchange he made to close the Gate on the Amestris side was far from equal...
1. Waking up, Mustang

A brief explanation of the idea behind this: Taking place immediately after the movie (ergo, spoilers), this fic is the result of an overactive imagination wondering what would be required in closing the Gate. Ed and Al gave up their world to close it on the Earth side. So what about everyone's favorite ex-colonel?

Story started: 1/15/07

Chapter completed: 1/15/07

**Disclaimer:** Rallalon does not own FMA. Nor does she own any of its places, characters or items.

.-.-.-.-.

Damn, his head hurt. It hadn't hurt this badly since he'd lost his eye and then, he had had the benefit of painkillers.

Roy Mustang, Corporal, gingerly sat up amidst the rubble and destruction. This was unexpected in several ways. First, he was alive.

Surprise, surprise.

Second, he was on the ground, the airship not even in sight. Well, what passed for sight. Vision no longer one of his strengths, Roy squinted around weakly, checking his blurry surroundings. Was that gunfire he heard or were his ears ringing that badly? Both, he assumed.

Damn, damn, damn his head. It felt like something had torn it open, torn something out and slammed the halves back together with no regard for the original configuration. Moving only made it worse.

"Colonel!"

Wincing at the noise before wincing at his own movement, Roy let out a weak cry of "Here!" Never mind that wasn't his rank any longer; he needed to get someone over here. He needed to tell them, tell them it was over.

The Gate was closed.

His entire body jerked back with that thought, falling back onto the rubble. His breath didn't so much catch in his throat as dig in there, jerking in and out in short, harsh gasps. Gloved hands grabbed at nothing, booted feet pushing uselessly against loose bits of concrete and stone. Debris scraped at his back, tearing cloth and bruising, scraping skin. An image flashed before his eyes –

his _eyes_ both his _eyes_ what was this? not important no because he could _see!_ he could see again finally amazingly both eyes he could see

-- the looming door standing in sandy nothingness, shut, closed, locked forever, gone and lost and never again to be opened, never again to function. And yet the eyes still peered out, the hands still reached, grabbing, glaring, coveting, taking, always taking until it was all gone gone gone gone gone

"Colonel!"

It was gone. The world changed and flattened, darkening and disappearing on his left side. And above...

"Colonel, breathe!"

Hands caught his face and he lashed out, his feeble effort never so much as taking spark, his gloves torn, his fingers twitching. Pain flared beneath his skull as his head was moved, neck adjusted. Gasping, choking on dust-filled air, his body in rebellion against itself, the world flashed a color beyond description, the color behind the eyelid of an unconscious man, a dead man. He drew a shaking breath, straining against something he couldn't name, something long gone.

Gone, yet to struggle against all the same.

Focusing on his breathing, his eye attempting to focus on his fellow soldier, his mind dredged up some sort of list of recent events. The Gate was closed. He had closed it. He was certain. He had closed it on this side and Fullmetal... Ed was gone, this time for good. Alphonse Elric as well, as it turned out. He assumed. And on the other side, the Gate was closed as well. It was done. But what...?

"Colonel, are you all right?"

He coughed a bit. While the pain in his throat didn't rival that of his head, it was by no means minor. Focus. He had to focus. "Close enough." Cough. "Lieutenant," he added, noting the uniform. "Too much dust, that's all. You can let go now." Keeping the windpipe open was good, but he could definitely manage on his own.

"Sorry, sir," she replied, releasing his jaw from a slightly shaking grip. The lieutenant remained leaning over him, a very worried expression visible beneath her helmet. She looked like she either expected him to break into another coughing fit or to spontaneously combust, which was ridiculous.

Kimblee would have spontaneously combusted. Roy Mustang would have just started smoking around the edges.

"It's 'corporal', lieutenant," he said by way of reply. Couldn't she see the uniform? "No need for the 'sir'."

She frowned but thankfully decided to accept this. Straightening up, she offered him an uncertain hand. "Can you walk?"

"Let's find out," he answered, taking the assistance after only a moment of hesitation. This was going to hurt.

Somehow, it failed to hurt as much as it could have. The headache was fading bit by bit, his vision clearing. He wasn't even sure why the memory of the Gate had set him off like that. He'd had a feeling, he'd thought. A feeling that something... something was...

Well, whatever he had forgotten, it couldn't have been that important.

"What happened up there? Corporal."

Great, now she was being stiff. Misjudging his rank wasn't that big of a blunder, not with his record. Not with who he had used to be. "Alchemy," he replied, making use of this highly simplified answer. Non-alchemists tended to want to skip around the details. Hopefully, that would give him enough time to come up with an explanation of what he'd done. Of what they'd done and where the boys had gone. "It's complicated."

To say the lieutenant did not react in the predicted manner was like stating that Fullmetal became slightly irked when called a shrimp.

"I'd like an explanation, corporal," she demanded with enough force to turn his glance at her into a stunned stare. "I think I deserve one." The effect of her glaring eyes combined with the stern set to her mouth in such a way to inspire terror.

It was either that, or the fact that this very pissed woman was heavily armed.

Roy stared at her mutely, his remaining eyebrow climbing up his forehead, his eye wide. That was a tone he'd heard only a few times before and usually, the woman would be demanding to know why she'd woken up alone. That comparison utterly failed to make sense in this situation, however. He'd never seen this woman before, much less slept with her.

While it was true he hadn't spent much time with people recently, the former playboy retained enough sense not to start with his initial reply. Asking the ever-innocent question why in the face of feminine rage was the sure path to destruction. Thus…

"And you'll get one," he assured her, attempting a promising smile. "But it _is_ complicated. I should speak with the higher ups about this first."

Once again, the lieutenant absolutely failed to react in the predicted manner. Instead of accepting the offer, she seemed to take it as a personal insult, glaring at him more fiercely than before.

"All right," she said icily. "Let's get you back to HQ."

What a change. First she was uncomfortably concerned for his wellbeing and then she was giving him absolutely murderous glances. Still, rescue was rescue. He followed behind by a few paces, noticing the sudden departure of his headache. At least something was getting better; he wasn't looking forward to explaining this to whoever was left in charge, not in the least. "Thank you. I appreciate it, Lieutenant...?"

She turned back to stare at him, equal parts anger and confusion in those amber eyes. "What?"

He blinked, but recovered well enough for a man who was half-hermit.

Roy gave her a questioning look and said nothing.

"Did you just ask for my name?" she demanded, finding this disturbingly offensive.

"That was my intention, yes." If he sounded clueless, there was a very good reason for it. It had been a long day. Setting minor injuries aside, he was tired, no, _exhausted_ from his first alchemy in a year. Completely nerve-wracking alchemy, preformed at long range by a man who couldn't throw a paper ball into a trash can accurately. Add in the nightmare of the Gate and he was well within his rights to pitch a screaming fight. Being a only touch slow on the uptake wasn't too bad, all things considered.

She answered by asking him the question he'd stopped himself from posing to her mere moments before. "Why?"

"To learn your name," he said carefully, taken aback at the woman's vehemence. She was either completely incapable of dealing with stress or he had an unfortunate resemblance to some other one-eyed man. Roy wasn't entirely sure which yet.

The lieutenant went quiet, her expression flickering through emotions to quickly to catch. Finally, with a stunned sort of angry disbelief, she put to him one last question. Her tone would have been suitable for asking a doctor if her husband were to die, for asking her mother why daddy wasn't home yet, for asking God when the world would end.

"You don't know who I am?"

"No," he replied, an uncomfortable feeling building up in the depths of his stomach.

It was that tone and her resulting expression that did it, that unfathomable conflict raging behind amber eyes. Without that sight, he wouldn't have asked, wouldn't have found reason for asking.

"Should I?"


	2. Withdrawal, Havoc

Chapter started: 1/17/07

Chapter finished: 1/20/07

Disclaimer: Rallalon does not own FMA. Nor does she own any of its places, characters or items.

Yep, I should be spending my week before finals studying, but this is what ends up coming out in my notebook. If I update again before the 26th, please do me a favor and yell at me to do something productive. Thankya.

.-.-.-.-.

Havoc didn't know what the total casualties had been and he was very sure that he didn't want to know. Just looking around the wreck Central had become was enough. Not ruin, though. They weren't at that point.

Not yet.

If it was, he would have had a major conflict over running back here in the confusion to the hastily erected hospital tents. Currently, another duty was more pressing than identifying corpses: care for the living before the dead, after all. Truth be told, he was still damn irritated over what he had to do. He knew Riza had issues dealing with the Colonel nowadays, but... She was wrong. Either about the man's condition or for leaving him alone with it. God, he hoped it was the former. The memory of a kid crossed his mind, a kid who he'd first met as a suit of armor, a kid who had only looked at him questioningly and asked for his name.

If he hadn't been running already and half exhausted to boot, he would have broken into a sprint.

As it was, he nearly ran past the man, noticing the eye patch only after a double take. With Mustang holding his head like that, it was hard to tell. His posture was completely off, too. That was clear even with him sitting against the wall like that. Gone was the confident general of an hour ago; this man was uncomfortably similar to the beaten corporal he and Breda had visited up in the north, defeated and half-dead, broken and afraid of himself.

_Shit_.

"Chief!" Havoc called, dashing over, jumping over minor debris until he stood before the man. Panting, he hunkered down and looked the other man straight in the eye. "Chief, tell me you know who I am." It had disturbed the hell out of him, that blank look, when it was only coming from a boy he barely knew. From the Colonel, it... it would --

"Havoc," Mustang replied in the over-articulated tone of a man with a very large headache, "shut the hell up."

Chuckling from sheer relief, Havoc sat down next to him, making sure to keep on his right side. In automatic motion, his hands sought out a cigarette from his pockets. It was in his mouth before he'd realized what he was doing and then it was too late to stop. That small mood boost immediately let up, bringing him crashing right back down. Feeling all sorts of guilty, he pulled out his lighter, flicked out a flame and breathed in that good old nicotine. It wasn't so much a bad habit to him as a comfort thing, and right now, Havoc would have given a lot for a little bit of comfort.

Mustang hadn't looked at him.

Great. Now he had to figure out how to bring the topic up on his own. Or wait it out of him. Seeing _that_ look on his face, Havoc quickly concluded that whatever option which involved keeping his mouth shut was the option to take.

It was a slow minute before Mustang spoke. "I've been thinking about this."

"Oh?" Havoc asked noncommittally, hoping Mustang would keep talking without anything more than gentle prompting.

"From his dealing with – with the Gate," Mustang continued, as if he hadn't been about to mention human transmutation, "Alphonse Elric's memories of his time as a suit of armor were taken from him. Due to equal exchange."

"I'd thought of that," Havoc replied without thinking. True, he didn't know much about that whole Gate thing, but the equal exchange part of alchemy applying to some really random stuff, he was familiar with.

From the look Mustang gave him, his earlier fear was understood. Still, that was enough of a break to allow the man to slip back into silence.

He'd really hoped he wouldn't have to prompt. So much for that. "So what did you do, chief? That made equal exchange apply?"

"I closed the Gate."

"And that's what those things came through." This was half-statement, half-question.

"It was," Mustang replied tiredly, emphasizing his use of the past tense.

"Damn," Havoc said appreciatively.

Mustang closed his eye and nodded, leaning back against the wall behind him. Havoc stayed where he was, watching the growing lines in front of the hospital tent with an increasingly guilty feeling. That was a lot to think about. It was also a lot that Havoc would rather _not_ think about.

But Riza had asked him. Actually, she was expecting him to do this or face the classic Hawkeye Rage of Death. That was the same thing, or close enough to it. He'd get through this and then immediately get back to rounding up the wounded. First things first: they needed Mustang to seize command again, to organize and rally them in the way he always seemed to manage so effortlessly. The chain of command had been shoved on its ass and the man most capable of picking it back up again was… in need of some help.

"Chief?"

"Mm." At the very least, Mustang did look at him.

"What did you think you'd be giving up?"

Silence stretched out between the pair despite the clamor around them, Havoc carefully watching the other man's face and pointedly setting aside the terrible feeling of having far better things to do. Watching Mustang was as good as hearing a reply.

"Chief..." Havoc began, not knowing where to start but recognizing a familiar transition when he found one, "...why were you willing to die?"

In any other situation, Mustang's response would have been aggravatingly vague, frustratingly useless. In this context, the meaning was as clear as it was horrific.

Mustang closed his eye once more and said, "I don't remember."

"Please tell me that's not what you said to Hawkeye." God, that would kill her, plain and simple.

What Mustang said next was worse on so many levels. "Who?"

Havoc stared.

"Oh." Mustang looked away, a man who didn't even know how upset he should have been. "Her."

"Yeah," Havoc replied, a strong edge to his voice. "_Her_."

"She wouldn't tell me her name." Mustang made this sound like a strange sort of apology, as if it wasn't his fault he didn't remember.

_Well_, prompted a small part of Havoc's overwhelmed mind, _isn't it?_ No. No it wasn't. Mustang hadn't willingly sacrificed Hawkeye to the Door o' Alchemy. He had only... _He'd only tried to end it all while 'serving his country in the best way he knew how'. Damn. That's messed up. _But wasn't that so in-character for the man? The newly promoted Brigadier General who nearly had died assassinating the Fuhrer? It was a part of him that had always been there, always been peeking out since before Havoc had known him, ever since Ishbal. But never had it been this noticeably there, this blatantly obvious.

Realizing Mustang was waiting for an answer, Havoc replied belatedly, "That's First Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye." This was so wrong. So wrong. "You saw her a few hours ago, right after you saw me and Breda. I mean, I _saw_ you two together. Breda and Fuery and Falman and Major Armstrong... We saw you," he finished weakly.

This time when Mustang looked at him, yet another realization struck them both. Each was waiting for the other to reveal this as a prank; each was hoping for that more than anything else. And if it was both of them, the pair realized as they stared at one another, than it had to be neither.

…_Shit_. This was worse than – than – than… This was worse than _withdrawal_, worse than the shaking, worse than coughing up a dead black lung, worse than the cold sweats during sleepless nights. This was watching Mustang go through it, watching him stripped of an unkickable habit he didn't even know he had. Havoc knew from one part personal experience and two parts morbid imagination that when the chief's shakes hit, they were more likely than not going to shake him apart.

"Are you sure, Havoc?" Mustang asked at last, pressing for something, some gap in the story.

"She was there."

"Then I didn't see her."

"You _spoke_ to her."

Mustang looked straight ahead, his brow furrowing, his headache obviously growing worse. "I didn't." His tone dared the blond man to contradict.

"Yes you did," Havoc disputed. As Mustang's gaze fell upon him, Havoc got the strong feeling that he would be made to regret it.

"That was barely two hours ago." The fact that he was missing an eye failed to weaken Mustang's glare in the slightest.

"I know."

Much to his credit, Mustang didn't say anything Havoc was dreading, all the clichéd amnesiac lines that no man should seriously utter. There was no "This can't be happening", no "it's all a lie!" and – thankfully – none of that "Who am I? Where am I? And who the hell are you?" Mustang simply rubbed at his face tiredly, not so much as a sigh escaping him.

To Havoc, this wordless acceptance of defeat was infinitely worse.

So what if he was actively trying to convince the man? He shouldn't just accept it. He shouldn't just give in. Havoc didn't know exactly what Mustang should have done, but this wasn't it. The man wasn't simply taking this sitting down; he was taking it propped up against a wall!

All right… If Mustang hadn't forgotten the event but had edited out Hawkeye from his memory, what was an event that Hawkeye couldn't be erased from? Not without the event still making sense.

"Hey, Chief, just checking, but what happened to you when you were recovering from the coup?"

Clearly not following this change of topic, Mustang's eye searched Havoc's face. "What do you mean?"

"Where were you, when you were recovering? Who took care of you?" _Poker face, poker face, keep it on, keep it up…_

Mustang dropped his gaze, an action Havoc would never get used to, not when coming from him. The former-general frowned, brow creasing, his hand rising to his temple. His eye went back and forth, watching some unseen specter or searching for that lost piece of information. Either way, either one, it was creepy as hell to watch.

"I was at the hospital," Mustang replied in a clipped tone, in a pained voice. "There was." He didn't so much trail off as end the sentence right there.

"There was what, chief?" Havoc prompted, watching in deep concern and morbid fascination.

"A doctor. Some nurses. That's – that's what I remember. I remember that." Mustang was still looking down, his eye still moving sightlessly. A wince drew his mouth into a scowl, his left hand protectively over the eye patch. "That's what I remember," Mustang repeated, as if the blond man might have missed it the first time.

Havoc had never heard him sound so unsure. "Chief-"

"That's what I remember!" Mustang snapped with the rage of the wounded. "That's what happened!"

Both quickly became aware of the looks Mustang's yells had attracted. This was going all wrong. Instead of getting everyone calmed down, Mustang was likely to create a panic, himself first among the members.

"Chief?" Havoc ventured. "Can you work through this, just for now? Take command again?" Attempting vainly to redirect Mustang's ire, he added, "Don't tell me you're afraid of a court martial?"

Mustang's expression said a lot of things. First among them was the word "no".

"Unless you'd rather stay here and talk about Hawkeye."

It was an amazing thing, Havoc thought as Mustang stood up and gave him that reproachful look. Even without remembering the woman, she was still an effective threat.

"All right, I'll try," Mustang agreed at last, reassuringly stable on his feet if not in his mind. "It's not as if I've anything else left to lose."

_And that_, Havoc thought but wisely did not say aloud, _is exactly the problem_.


	3. Work, Hawkeye & Mustang

Chapter started: 1/23/07

Chapter finished: 3/10/07

Disclaimer: Rallalon does not own FMA. Nor does she own any of its places, characters or items.

The length of time to write a chapter has pretty much exploded due to my new classes. Ergo, chapters will be coming a lot slower, which I'm betting you've realized. Sorry 'bout that.

.-.-.-.-.

It was amazing, Hawkeye reflected as she took her long-accustomed seat in the office, how much could change in three weeks. A capital city could be razed halfway to the ground and partially rebuilt. An enlisted man who had barely escaped court martial and execution for treason could be reinstated at the rank of Colonel, a war hero once more. New habits could be overwritten by habits older still, routines completely natural and entirely painful.

It was all so close to what it had been, once. It was too close, as a matter of fact. There should have been something more, some obnoxiously blatant sign of change. Time had marked them all, true enough, but these small discrepancies were growing easier and easier to overlook. This made it all the worse.

In the moments between excitement, in the breaks of these hectic days, the pain of years snapped back in full force each time the changes were made apparent. Each time she allowed herself to forget – just for a moment, never longer, just a moment – that their plans and goals had collapsed underneath them, she set herself up for that shock of realization, for feeling that horror anew. And yet she couldn't stop giving herself those small moments. She didn't _want_ to stop.

_TAP_-tap-_tap_tap.

The sound of Jean's feet tapping rapidly caught her attention, brought her gaze from –

not the colonel not looking at him not ignoring pretending mourning hoping hating not not not believing thinking feeling

-- the documents on her desk waiting to be processed. Even before she looked, she knew what she'd see on the blond man's face. His eyes were locked on the sole clock in the room, his pen shaking as his hand hovered about an unmarked piece of paper. A closer glance proved it to be the same one he had been staring at fifteen minutes ago. Like a bone held by a dog, a pencil was clasped firmly between his teeth, bit marks decorating nearly its entire length. Hawkeye didn't comment, instead getting back to work.

It was, after all, 10:57.

_TAP_-tap-_tap_tap.

The tapping grew louder and faster as the hour dragged itself to a close, the entire room aware of First Lieutenant Havoc's unconscious tick. _TAP_-tap-_tap_tap. _RIGHT_-left-_right_left. And on.

And on.

Hawkeye didn't need to look at the time to know they were in a new hour. The absence of Jean's incessant tapping was as telling as the face of any timepiece. Still, she took her time looking up, painstakingly completing the form she was working on. The tapping resumed as she wrote, speeding up as she neared the end of each line, slowing almost to a stop whenever her pen paused.

_TAP_-tap-_tap_tap. _TAP_-tap-_tap_tap. _TAP_-tap_tap_tap-_TAP_-tap_tap_tap.

Slowly, deliberately, Hawkeye set down the pen, her eyes scanning the document.

_TAP_taptaptapTaptaptaptaptap-

She put the form aside.

The tapping ceased immediately.

Hawkeye looked across their desks at Havoc, the man doing his absolute, exhausted best to match her gaze evenly. The purple splotches under his reddened eyes made this a trial for him, one that was growing more and more insurmountable with each passing day.

Taking the pencil from his mouth and sticking it somewhere under his desk - pocket or drawer, it didn't matter – Jean nodded, the thin line of his mouth fighting to form a grimace of distaste. Wordlessly, Hawkeye reached down into her own coat pocket, felt the increasingly familiar cardboard of the small box resting there. One-handedly and without looking, she flipped open the lid and eased out one the few remaining objects inside, a practiced motion by this point. Her gaze still on Jean, she closed the box once more before offering him what he had been waiting for all morning.

He took it, of course, reaching with nicotine stained fingers. He always did, with his hands shaking and his eyes raging. Jean held the cigarette for a long moment as if simply touching it would give him a fix. He stared at it, long and hard, before glancing to the clock.

11:02.

Noting this, Hawkeye told him quietly, "We'll go until quarter past eleven tomorrow."

Jean nodded, his expression half grim, half relieved as he lit up at last. No one stared at him outright, but anyone with half a wit knew where their collective focus laid. In a way, both she and Jean hated this moment, this small piece of the day more than any other time. As light was cast upon his struggle, all focus was drawn upon the blond man as he took his first fix of the day. Nearly all.

The hair on the back of her neck rose. Hawkeye did her utmost to ignore the feel of the questioning gaze, that horrifically ignorant look which always fell on her in this moment of distraction. All other attention drawn to Havoc, he thought she didn't notice.

That was the worst piece of all.

.-.-.-.-.-.

Wincing, Roy looked down, still not sure how large his window of unobserved observation was even after the past few weeks. It wasn't just the uncertainty that made him look away, he had to admit. He'd like to say that was the worst bit of it, those headaches.

That would have been a lie. A very tidy, convenient lie, but a lie he couldn't afford nonetheless.

When the world went mad, when memories constantly rewrote themselves, every piece of honesty counted.

Every. Last. One.

Like the pictures on his desk. Like the piles of documents filed away with his signature on them. Like those letters in his handwriting. Like that old pocket calendar he'd forgotten to throw away. Like the impromptu reminiscing his men broke into whenever he became too quiet, their attention focused on him, their eyes trying to look anywhere else. Like the resulting headaches.

No, the headaches weren't that bad, not after he'd started noticing when they cropped up. And it wasn't as if he hadn't had more help than was strictly necessary in figuring it out. Havoc had agreed with him on the No Shrinks rule, yet was also equally quick to try to psychoanalyze him. He'd started quietly, of course, but soon enough, Breda was jumping in and Falman was supplying obscure terminology to the pair. Fuery, thankfully, was keeping quiet and keeping his thoughts to himself. Now if the rest of them could shut up…

Doodling in the margins of some form or another – Roy had yet to actually check what it was for – he forced himself to admit that the men were doing a damn fine job of staying silent on the issue. This was a self-deception free zone. Or as close as he could come to it. So yes, they were all keeping the secret of his memory

_Gaps?_ _Editing? Unnatural theft?_

loss from the upper brass very well. If the higher ups caught wind of this little mental condition, _Colonel_ Roy Mustang could kiss his reinstatement good-bye. Apparently, saving the capital of your country could only get you so much.

Unsurprising, but still annoying as hell.

Glancing up at Havoc and the surrounding smoke slowly rising up towards the ceiling, he felt another pang. The blond man had quickly recognized the obvious feeling of awkwardness in the group and had just as quickly made himself appear to be its focus. Quite the right-hand-man, Jean Havoc. Despite all the assurances made, Roy would have had to be an idiot that Havoc was willingly going through withdrawal because he ran like a winded old man and couldn't keep a girlfriend with a sense of smell for a week. Those issues of Havoc's were hardly new. Roy's new condition, however…

And so, it was official: they all had extremely skewed priorities.

He'd missed that.

The scraping of chair leg against the floor threatened to jerk his head up, but he managed not to look. He kept his gaze strictly on the paper in front of him and attempted to cover the movement of his head by switching hands to prop up his chin on. He wasn't looking; he wouldn't.

That didn't mean he wasn't watching.

Abruptly, she was outside of his limited world of sight. Just a few feet to his left and then nothing, then darkness. Why was there a filing cabinet on his left? Every damn _day_ he wondered that and now it was too late to move it without looking crazier

_no_ _not going there not thinking it too bad already stop it stop thinking stop stop stop it just STOP_

than he already was. So now he simply had to deal with the reality of a filing cabinet where he couldn't discretely look, a filing cabinet which a certain someone would make trips to multiple times a day. Right there, out of his line of sight. She'd stand there for a second and then – yes, there was the sound – a drawer would open. Then – rummage, rummage, sigh, rummage – she would look for something or other. And after… nothing.

Silence, save for Fury and Breda wondering aloud what the destruction had done to their vacation time.

He tried to focus on the conversation, tried to get his mind away from one inescapable fact:

She was staring at him.

He knew it.

He was sure of it.

He just hadn't checked yet.

…Next time.

_always_ _next time_

The drawer sounded loudly as she closed it, the jarring noise making a natural glance possible. The cabinets they'd had before hadn't been half so loud.

Save the city, save possibly the entire world, and the reward is the most annoying piece of office furniture available. _Thank you, sir, glad to help._ _How about you melt that thing down and give me a metal instead? It'd be quieter, at least._

She came back into his range of sight.

He didn't look.

His gaze almost went to her, but it stopped midway. This wasn't due to any form of self-control, though it probably would have kicked in eventually. No, this was because of a photo on his desk, an old one he'd been unable to part with even when going up north. Eight soldiers in uniform stood proudly in it, save for the pair who knelt.

For once, he found that his eye wasn't forcibly drawn to the woman who had stood

_irony_ _idiotic irony nothing more than coincidence really_

at his left for the shot. His gaze went slightly lower this time, stuck there. A man knelt in front of the blond woman, had insisted on kneeling and making Havoc kneel too. It would make the picture better, he had insisted, and if there was one thing you didn't argue about with Maes Hughes, it was photography.

Maes Hughes.

Maes the best friend.

Hughes the unofficial aid.

…Brigadier General, the dead.

Roy remembered it. All of it. Years of feinting annoyance before becoming truly irritated, increasingly infrequent nights spent in bars, hourly visits and the obligatory baby picture of the day… He remembered it. He remembered all of it, even if some recalled events had probably involved another member of the cast. And if he remembered Hughes, the person most important to him

_assumed_ _most important not sure never sure again assuming_

then what were the implications here? What did that-

_don't_ _think_

"Sir?"

_stop_

"Is something-"

_hurts_

"-wrong?"

_stop_ _thinking_

"Colonel, you really-"

_stop_ _thinking or_

"-don't look so good."

_the_ _gate will open_

"Colonel?"

_and_ _this time-_

"Chief, do you hear us?"

_STOP_

"Chief!"

He closed his eye, making himself stop looking at the photo. Absently, his hand scratched at the band of his eye-patch, a tired motion. He swallowed, felt himself buying time. Damn. Damn damn damn damn damn damn damn…

"I hear you," he said.

"It's nothing," he continued.

"I'm fine," he added.

Two lies out of three. Small wonder his world was so twisted.


	4. Weary, Hawkeye

Chapter started: 3/25/07

Chapter finished: 3/25/07

Disclaimer: Rallalon does not own FMA. Nor does she own any of its places, characters or items.

I would like to refer to this chapter as a writing spasm. That is all.

.-.-.-.-.-.

"How long d'you think it'll be until the usual place is rebuilt?" Jean asked, chewing on a coffee stir.

Hawkeye shrugged, not listening too closely. "A few more weeks, probably. I can't see a coffee shop being that high of a priority." If Jean was going to keep the conversation a light one, she wasn't about to complain.

"Never underestimate the power of an addiction," he replied, his foot tapping away.

A Thursday routine, the pair had been taking their lunch break out to a coffee shop which was a reasonable distance away from the office. Originally Jean's effort to make sure that her life was more than her job, the brisk walk and open air lunch had become part of post-Mustang life. For the relaxing building and comforting plaza to be destroyed on the same day of her colonel's return was –

a perfect fit a total match almost to be expected

– disquieting.

"First nicotine, now it's caffeine," she remarked, inwardly wincing at the accidental rhyme. "We're never going to wean you off."

It was Jean's turn to shrug. "At least coffee smells good. One less reason to get dumped for."

Riza made a noncommittal noise, turning in her chair to look out the front window the replacement coffee shop. No fresh air, no sandwiches, no friendly wait staff that knew them both by name as well as favorite food… At least there was a view. And decent lemon tea. It could've been worse. She could be –

watching him watched by him

– back at the office. Back at the office and not getting any air or a chance to use her legs. It wasn't cramped here, that was all. ld be -

o friendly waitstaff that knew them both by name as well as favorite food...

Slowly, the silence between the pair grew awkward, the increasingly common trend between them. It hadn't used to be like this. No, silence used to be companionable, but now…

Riza didn't like to admit it, but she was far more inclined to ignore the reason behind the awkwardness than acknowledge it. It wasn't Jean's fault.

Finally, chewing all the while on that coffee stir, Jean found something he was comfortable saying. "What's your opinion on scones?"

Realizing that he was getting up, her reply was a short one. "Blueberry."

"Coming right up. My treat," he added with a nervous smile as she reached for her wallet.

"I'll buy next week." The words came out too quickly.

"Sure." It practically sounded as if he was reassuring her.

…She wanted her life back to normal. Nearly two years of rebuilding it and now- now _he_ was back and everything was wrong. Everything had focused on him for so long that when he left…

He wasn't the central pillar of her life any more. He hadn't been in a long time. There was no point now, no reason for it, no cause. Her life had long since ceased to be focused around Colonel Roy Mustang and his grand ideals.

And yet, it still felt like was.

It wasn't, of course. Not in the slightest. But she couldn't shake the feeling, that sense of _should be_ which never seemed to match up with her view of what actually was.

"-of blueberry."

Riza startled, surprising Jean in turn. "What?"

"I said, they're out of blueberry." He took the coffee stir out of his mouth before he said this, just to make sure she got the message.

Oh. "Never mind. I'm not hungry."

He frowned, his eyebrows furrowing to make his entire expression a question. "Didn't you say you skipped breakfast this morning?"

…Note to self: do not give Falman information unless all concerned parties are meant to know.

"I'm not hungry," she repeated. She was, actually, but hunger and appetite had recently become to entirely different matters for her. Besides, there was a part of her that wanted to be childishly contrary towards Jean. It stemmed from a jealousy of the most immature kind, but it was there all the same.

Jean gave her another questioning look before taking his seat across from her, also scone-less. "Riza, don't you think you-"

"No."

"You don't know the whole question yet," he insisted.

Hawkeye looked at him.

"Don't you think you and the colonel should talk?"

"No." Not yet. Not now. Not with... not with everything the way it was right now.

Jean sighed, turning towards the window as well. He chewed the coffee stir furiously, habit giving away his mood. "He's asked after you," Jean said at last.

Riza looked down and stirred her tea.

"Seems that something's missing, but he can't put his finger on it."

Calmly, she removed the spoon from her mug of tea. Set it down on a paper napkin.

"He knows enough to guess, though."

She lifted out the teabag, let it drip a moment. It joined the spoon on the napkin.

"I mean, it's getting really obvious to him."

The napkin slowly soaked through, the white paper stained into tea-tinted transparency.

"Riza."

She looked up, met his eyes.

"He needs you," Jean said.

"I don't see why he should," Riza replied, finally addressing what perhaps had pained her the most over the past few weeks.

"Maybe because he always-"

"Because he _never_ confided in me the way he does you."

There. She'd said it. Completely childish and immature as it was, she couldn't get it out of her head. And it wasn't just that _he_ was counting on Jean this much nowadays.

It was that he always thought he had. He thought that Jean Havoc was foremost in the group of his trusted aides. He thought that Jean Havoc was the one he had always leaned on, second only to Hughes. He believed that. And half the time, it wasn't even as if he knew –

_I_ met you first _I_ promised you first _I_ killed for you first was there for you always longest no matter what even when you tried to keep me safe _I _was there always always _always_ took care of you how can you not know that not care not realize not care not care not care at all

– she was there. He ignored her. He was _physically pained_ when he thought about her. How could she even expect him to want anything to do with her?

And how was it that she still wanted to hand on, despite that? Two years of rebuilding and in a matter of weeks, it was all gone.

"Look, Riza," Jean began after a considerably long pause. "It's not that he confides in me, per se. It's more like, well…"

Hawkeye gave no sign of helping him through this conversational minefield.

"Breda told me." After that little declaration, Jean hurried to explain. "He and the colonel are playing chess together again. Breda said he just makes conversation and sees what topics make the colonel play the worst. You know how well Breda can assemble little clues like that." He leaned forward, switching the coffee stir from one side of his mouth to the other. "No one's confiding in anyone."

It was her turn to be silent for a moment. "I almost wish he was," she admitted at last.

"Yeah," Jean agreed, his expression getting across his meaning far more than his single word could.

For the first time in weeks, they faded into a silence that was comfortable, Riza sipping her tea and Havoc switching to his third coffee stir of the afternoon. It was starting to get a little stuffy in there as more people came in for something resembling lunch, but no matter, they would be leaving soon anyway.

"I wasn't lying," Jean told her as they picked up their jackets to leave, "when I said he'd asked after you."

Holding her uniform jacket rather than wearing it, she couldn't bring herself to reply to that, not directly. Not when the first words to come to mind were "Maybe someday he'll ask me directly." No, not something she was going to say aloud.

"I believed you," she said instead by way of reassurance.

Jean nodded to her, the pair exiting the small shop and emerging into the fresh air and sunlight. As walks went, it was an uneventful one, nothing at all out of the ordinary occurring. No giant ships burst forth from the ground, no suits of armor came barreling towards them and there was a noted lack of their old fallback, scarred serial killers.

Havoc enjoyed pointing this out to her. "At least something is looking up."

"Like the weather."

"That too." And once again came the lapse into companionable silence, comfortable and familiar.

As the headquarters office building came slowly into sight, Jean stopped abruptly, looking at her with an odd expression.

"What is it, Jean?"

"You've heard about how they found the remains of the gate underground, right?" he asked. "That huge square frame with only half-solid gunk inside it?"

_And burn marks scorching the surrounding area_. "A little about it, yes."

"Well, I've been thinking for a while about..." Jean trailed off embarrassed.

She looked at him, both patient and demanding.

"It sounds so cliché," he replied.

"What does, Jean?"

"Equivalent Exchange and all that," Havoc explained. "When you think about it, he saved the world, at least in a way. It makes sense that he would have to lose it too."

Hawkeye was silent for a short moment, just a small pause. "You're right," she said. "It does sound cliché."

.-.-.-.

Later that night, sitting in her bed with Black Hayate at her feet and a paperback romance in hand, it occurred to her that a cliché could be just what a person needed to get them through the day. Or even the night. She set down the book, turned off the light. Black Hayate was shooed onto the floor with almost a smile.

She closed her eyes and surrendered herself to dreams old and unfading.


End file.
